What was going on when I was born?

OWNERS of properties of ecological or historical significance are often eligible for substantial tax savings if they donate an easement to a recognized preservation or conservation group. Such easements insure perpetual preservation of the integrity of the land or the facade of the building regardless of future ownership, with the conservation or preservation group acting as guardian. It is unlikely, for instance, that future owners could destroy the beauty of land carrying a conservation easement by building on it. And no one purchasing a historic house with an easement on its facade could realistically expect to construct an addition or alter the shape of the windows.

Tense Ending toA Space Story The space shuttle Columbia and its international cargo of scientific gold came home last week - a little late, but worth the wait. It will probably take a long time for scientists to digest all the experiments performed in the piggy-backing Spacelab, and for astronauts to forget the gut- wrenching jolt that triggered the landing delay.

Administration officials say they expect President Reagan's new budget to include a cut of about $8 billion in nonmilitary domestic spending, plus reductions of about $4 billion in Medicare and other benefit programs. The officials, who are preparing the final version of the election-year budget, also say they expect Mr. Reagan to resubmit his contingency tax-increase proposal. Most of the decisions on nonmilitary domestic spending have been made, they said, and there is a general agreement on the cuts in the individual-benefit programs. The officials also acknowledged that the proposed spending total in the fiscal year 1985 was expected to be more than $918 billion, which was the target for the 1985 budget set earlier this year. In the fiscal year 1984, which began Oct. 1, spending, based on Congressional action so far, is expected to be about $850 billion.

Raul Ricardo Alfonsin was inaugurated President of Argentina today amid joyous celebrations that ended nearly eight years of military rule. More than 100,000 Argentines poured into the streets to cheer the 56-year-old political moderate as a sense of hope gripped this long-tumultuous country. Waving flags and wearing white berets, a symbol of Mr. Alfonsin's Radical Party, the crowds rained confetti on him as he traveled in a 1950's Cadillac convertible from the swearing in at the Congress to the Pink House, the presidential palace. Columns of cavalry marched by his side.

Among the standard one- and two-bedroom townhouses in Glen River, a condominium community now under construction on River Road in Wilton, Conn., are units designed to suit the needs of handicapped occupants. These special dwellings are all one- level homes and meet Federal standards for the handicapped.

Consumer Celebration For the nation's retailers, the Christmas season is turning out to be a time for Thanksgiving. Vigorous, in some cases frantic, activity at stores across the country has prompted many projections that this year's holiday sales will be the best in the last five. That view could receive statistical support tommorrow, when November's retail sales are released by the Commerce Department. For the better part of 1983, the important determinants of buoyant sales - declining unemployment, healthy consumer confidence levels, strong income growth and a low inflation rate - have been in place. Fierce competition among retailers, prompting some sharp price cutting, has provided extra impetus. Monthly retail sales figures, which have been rising 7 to 8 percentage points above 1982 levels in real, inflation-adjusted terms since the second quarter, are likely to continue strong into 1984, said John Hammond, a Data Resources Inc. economist. But, following the pattern of past economic cycles, personal income growth is likely to slow in a few months and retail sales are likely to rise more modestly.

''WE are relocating,'' says a sign in the window of 859 Madison Avenue, at 71st Street, the former shop of Elgot appliance dealers. ''We have moved to 33 East 68th Street,'' says the sign in the window at Wallis Mayers Needlework at 780. ''Come see our beautiful new store.'' ''Fred Leighton Estate Jewelers is pleased to announce our new shop is now open at 781 Madison,'' says the sign at 763.''Balogh Jewelers coming this fall,'' says the sign at 798. Madison in the 60's and 70's, which has been an upscale retail district for decades, is moving farther up the scale. This prime East Side shopping thoroughfare is in constant flux, with old stores disappearing overnight and new ones opening almost the next morning.

LONDON Sometime in the middle of the 1960's, Michael Frayn wrote an article in the British Sunday newspaper The Observer entitled ''Business Worries.'' The business in question was show business, and the worries were those of the audience. Or rather they were those of the actors that communicated themselves to the audience. The key sentence in the essay is, ''All the time one is waiting aghast for some embarrassing disaster to occur.'' Among the disasters itemized by Mr. Frayn are the supposed corpse that can hardly avoid taking visible breaths after perishing in a strenuous sword fight, the pause that may turn out to be pregnant with a forgotten line, and the vital prop that gets lost. Mr. Frayn was not a playwright when he wrote that piece, but he is now. And in ''Business Worries'' may be discerned the promise of ''Noises Off,'' the backstage farce that is currently exhausting its third set of actors in London and that opens tonight on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson.

Western Europe's dreams of economic togetherness grew noticeably dimmer last week. In three days of stormy meetings in Athens, leaders of the European Economic Community's 10 member countries couldn't reconcile their corrosive differences or even pretend they had.

LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K By J. M. Coetzee. 184 pp. New York: The Viking Press. $13.95. THE literature of conscience is ultimately about the bewilderment of the naive. Why do men carry guns and build prison camps, when the nurturing earth is made for freedom? To the outcast, the stray, the simpleton, the unsuspecting - to the innocent - the ideologies that order society are inane, incomprehensible. To the innocent, comprehension comes unaccoutered, stripped, uninstructed - Huck Finn on the loose, who merely knows what he knows. And what the pariah Huck knows, against the weight and law and common logic of his slaveholding ''sivilization,'' is that the black man is whole, the rightful owner of his life and times.

CONNECTICUT, which draws 5 percent of its revenue from legalized gambling, is seeking to bolster that income. Mindful of a General Assembly moratorium that bans such new types of legalized gambling as casinos until June 1985, gaming officials say they want only to ''enhance'' or extend the forms that are allowed now by legislation. They also plan to actively promote their games. ''We want to optimize some of the things we have,'' said A. W. Oppenheimer, executive director of the State Division of Special Revenue. The division oversees all forms of betting in the state except for bingo, which is legal when games are run by nonprofit organizations. Mr. Oppenheimer said the agency's goal is to contribute $200 million to the state budget in fiscal year 1986.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz heard strong criticism today from Arab leaders about strengthened American ties with Israel and responded bluntly in defense of the policy, which he said was not aimed against Arab interests. Speaking in Tunis after being rebuked publicly and privately over the plans for increased political and military cooperation with Israel, Mr. Shultz said: ''It is important to say in an Arab capital that the United States has had, does have, and will have a strong relationship with Israel, and I think everyone understands that and should understand that.'' An Accumulation of Criticism Mr. Shultz spoke at the airport in Tunis just before he left, and was responding specifically to farewell remarks made moments earlier by Foreign Minister Beji Caid Essebsi of Tunisia. He said later that he had decided to speak out because of the accumulation of criticism from other pro-Western Arab states, including Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, since Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel visited Washington Nov. 27 to 29.